Barney's Blog: Sexual Profiling
This is the thirtieth entry of Barney's Blog, written by ''How I Met Your Mother'' main character Barney Stinson. It was retrieved from the CBS archive here. This entry is unrelated to any episode. Sexual Profiling Friday, May 5, 2006, 10:43am Your online profile is your calling card, the way you represent yourself to babes across the land and seas. So it needs to kick ass. Profiles can be roughly broken down into two parts, the picture and the witty blurb. Both are important, but if you had to choose one to really nail, it should be both of them. First you'll need to choose a handle, which protects your privacy and allows you to pretend to be a vast number of different people at the same time. Any four-word phrase whatsoever makes a good handle once you remove the spaces. I have cribbed panty-melting handles from weather reports, Supreme Court decisions, and the backs of cereal boxes. In fact, "anyfourwordphrase" is a pretty sweet one. Dibs on that. THE PICTURE A picture is worth a thousand words, and it's vitally important for luring in chicks who are foreign or can't read. The shot I most often recommend is the extreme close-up. An extreme close-up says a lot about you. It says that you are mysterious and artsy, and that you possess at least one body part. Plus, it's extremely flattering, capable of turning an ordinary dude into a smoldering sex god. Observe: even he doesn't think this picture will get him laid vs. Other good pictures to include in your portfolio are pictures of dogs and expensive cars. This ensures the full spectrum of single girls will be attracted to you. THE WITTY BLURB Brevity is the soul of wit, so don't be suckered by many sites' open-ended "get to know me" formats into any unnecessary soul-baring. Now is not the time to explore your hopes and dreams for the future or ponder the lyrics to your favorite Tori Amos song. The stigma of Internet dating may be gone, but the stigma of being an irritating loser will never die. Instead, keep your profile Zen and uncluttered, full of white space and none of your own ideas. You can answer direct questions with vaguely-related quotations of famous dead people. Don't be too specific in terms of your likes and dislikes. You don't want to alienate any hot 19-year-olds just because they have crappy taste in music. That would be wrong. Observing the rules set forth above, we learn that the perfect online dating profile would look something like this. Finally, if you're still unsure about what to write, it's probably not a problem to just find a profile you admire and copy it word for word. I've thought about this for minutes, and they're never going to find out. And even if they did, they would probably be flattered and/or not really able to sue you. I would like to see them try. Don't forget to sub in your own photo and email address... or, if it's a really outstanding profile, feel free to use mine, barneystinson@yahoo.com. Notes and Trivia